Nekochaners & Mac'ers,
as I have been slowly moving all my work from SGI Octane2 to Mac Pro, I got my 2GB Fibre Channel Array switched over so it is now running off Mac Pro.
I was interested to see what kind of through-put I got relative to my Octane2.
The disks and basic configuration I have is the same as per Octane2:
16 JBOD 2GB Fibre Channel Array, connected via IBM/Brocode FC Switch, with:
4 SEAGATE FATA, 500GB, 7200 RPM, 1GB FC Disks (Backup) & 12 HITACHI 300GB, 10K RPM, 2GB FC Disks (Online)
On my Mac Pro I have Apple RAID SATA/SAS Controller with 4 1TB 7200 RPM SATA II Disks & 1 Apple Dual Channel 4GB Fibre Channel Adaptor.
To do some initial testing i just used
XBench, as it was simple.
I did comparative tests of Apple Hardware RAID with SATA II, Striped RAID 0 via Fibre Channel & Striped/Mirror RAID 0+1 .
Here are the results:
Code:
4 Striped (RAID 0), 300GB, 10K RPM, 2GB via Apple PCIe Dual Channel FC Adaptor (Software RAID)
Disk Test 109.03
Sequential 90.58
Uncached Write 385.31 236.58 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 65.55 37.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 42.94 12.57 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 331.04 166.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 136.93
Uncached Write 79.72 8.44 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 226.89 72.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 136.61 0.97 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 202.42 37.56 MB/sec [256K blocks]
8 Striped/Mirror (RAID 0+1) (4 Stripes/Mirrored Pairs), 300GB, 10K RPM, 2GB via Apple PCIe Dual Channel FC Adaptor (Software RAID)
Disk Test 63.89
Sequential 42.39
Uncached Write 255.50 156.87 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 160.74 90.95 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 12.91 3.78 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 148.36 74.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 129.65
Uncached Write 73.88 7.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 200.56 64.21 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 138.51 0.98 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 195.67 36.31 MB/sec [256K blocks]
4 Disk RAID 5, 1TB, 7200 RPM, SATA II via Apple RAID Controller
Disk Test 129.78
Sequential 261.12
Uncached Write 354.79 217.84 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 300.19 169.85 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 138.08 40.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 519.11 260.90 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 86.35
Uncached Write 43.44 4.60 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 56.43 18.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 369.94 2.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 347.60 64.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]
So result show that Mac is getting better max sequential (166/236 MB/Sec vs 142/152 MB/Sec) than Octane2, but significantly worse max random (37/72 MB/Sec vs 142/112 MB/Sec).
But more interesting is overhead of going from software RAID 1 (Striped) to redundant RAID 1+0 (Striped/Mirror) where sequential goes from 166 -> 74 MB/Sec Read and 236 -> 156 MB/Sec Write.
On the hardware RAID front with Apple RAID controller configured for RAID 5 across 4 SATA disk difference between Sequential is not that big (260/217 vs. 166/236), but Random RW on Apple RAID is very slow... (37/72 vs. 18/64) so in general Apple performs poorly on the Random benchmark, which make you wonder about the benchmark itself..
So playing it safe via Software RAID 1+0 will have significant performance impact and it looks like hardware RAID with SATA is better option that Fibre Channel.
For straight throughput Software RAID 1 on Apple looks ok.
Cheers from Oz.
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